Hypothetical blockbuster trade would give Chiefs ninth pick of the 2024 draft

Might Kansas City consider a trade to get into the top 10 of the upcoming draft?

Any time the NFL Draft is looming, there are always suggestions for teams to make blockbuster draft-day trades. On Wednesday afternoon, NFL.com contributors Ali Bhanpuri, Gennaro Filice and Tom Blair each concocted a scenario in which an NFL team traded into the top 10 of the 2024 draft to grab a big-name player. All of these were described as “win-win” deals.

Blair’s idea was for the Kansas City Chiefs to land the draft’s ninth overall pick from the Chicago Bears, so they could use it to select Georgia tight end Brock Bowers — or perhaps a “marquee wide receiver.”

CHIEFS RECEIVE

2024 first-round pick (No. 9 overall)

BEARS RECEIVE

2024 first-round pick (No. 32)
2024 second-round pick (No. 64)
2024 fourth-round pick (No. 131)
2025 first-round pick (Valued at No. 24)

COST

Chiefs pay a 22% premium (1,641 points) to move up 23 spots into the top 10... for Travis Kelce’s successor.

Why Kansas City wins: The last time the Chiefs picked in the top 10, in 2017, they moved up to grab Patrick Mahomes. That cost them their first-round selection in 2018, and the highest they’ve picked since then was No. 21 overall in 2022, when they jumped up for Trent McDuffie. They’ve also tried to fill out Mahomes’ crew of pass-catchers using a mix of Day 2 upside players (Mecole Hardman in 2019, Skyy Moore in 2022 and Rashee Rice last year) and veteran free agents (Sammy Watkins, JuJu Smith-Schuster and Marquez Valdes-Scantling). This strategy has kind of worked, even without Tyreek Hill in the fold, thanks in large part to the continued excellence of tight end Travis Kelce. The 34-year-old can’t help anchor the offense forever, though, so in this scenario, Kansas City stops playing the lottery and goes hard for a legitimate blue-chipper.

There are several serious problems with this scenario.

• The picks being exchanged are being valued with the outmoded Jimmy Johnson trade chart. A 21% premium (equivalent to the 29th pick of the second round) might seem like a pretty fair price to pay for a chance to acquire Bowers — but by any reasonable standard, the real-world cost of these picks is much higher. Using the more modern Fitzgerald-Spielberger draft value chart (based on player salaries), it’s ten times more expensive: Kansas City’s picks are worth 215% more! According to the John Dixon chart (based on AV), it’s still very expensive: the Chiefs would pay 185% of the ninth pick’s value.
• Even if we accept that the Johnson chart represents the real value of these picks, there’s still a significant chance that Bowers won’t be able to replace what Kelce does in the Kansas City offense. (The research I did for the John Dixon chart showed that [between 1999 and 2016, there was roughly a 1-in-4 chance that...